Cyberpunk 2077
I had an absolutely massive review of this game, but I think I am going to just write a much shorter and more up front review.
Folks have been SLAMMING this game lately, and the most annoying part is that it’s mostly based on their hardware rather than the game itself. Sure, the game is absolutely unplayable on last gen base consoles and in no way should have been launched on them. SURE there are tons of bugs. YES there is performance issues even with the most high end of PC’s unless you spend a stupid amount of money and somehow managed to acquire an RTX 3090 with the new AMD processors.
at the end of the day, it’s fun. Absolutely not what we promised in the least, but just dumb fun.
Lets start with the good.
Cyberpunk 2077 has introduced us to what an ACTUAL massive open world city should look and feel like while traversing it. It aimed for the stars with Night City, and honestly achieved that. Within Night City, you will find some of the most impressionable and realistic main story characters. These characters are amazingly personable and create one of the most lively stories you might ever play through in a game, where their pain is your pain. Their sadness is your sadness. Each and every emotion they show is dramatic yet so real. You resonate with these character on a level that most games can only HOPE to achieve. With that, CD Projekt Red has truly created captivating characters.
This game is an action packed roller coaster from start to finish, with SO MANY quests that leave you wanting more, or sometimes wanting less. With the Main Campaign and Side Gigs, you’re sent on some of the most interesting and whacky missions that really knit together what this game tries to accomplish, and that’s a world that so torn a part, a place where anything goes and you’re left to be the ultimate mediator in its outcome.
The gameplay is honestly fantastic. It’s SUPER intense and really pays attention to graphic detail when it comes to fighting. So many games pull punches or don’t particularly prioritize the enemies you fight. In Cyberpunk, the enemies you fight are ALWAYS so individually crafted, look different, respond different, and when you hit that perfect sniper shot through their skull, they don’t magically burst into a pool of blood to hide who they were up close. No, they take that shot to their head, and when you go to look you see the exact person you shot, bullet through the brain. The detail in the combat is remarkable.
The weapon variety is also great, with a HEAP of different weapons to choose from, and builds to create, they’ve given a lot of thought into how each weapon is used, their upsides and downsides, and the way that players can most practically take advantage of them. The game DOES become quite easily quickly, but the action is non-stop and can surprise even high level players if they’re caught off guard.
All in all, I’ve REALLY enjoyed playing Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a lot of crazy action packed fun.
But sadly, there’s a lot that needs to be talked about. Specifically the fact that this game NOT what it was supposed to be.
Cyberpunk 2077 is just not what is what supposed to be
Cyberpunk 2077, at the end of the day, is absolutely the biggest disappointment of a supposed RPG ever put into existence. It’s just not an RPG, bottom line. Here we waited all these years to get the “big one” to pretty much rival all the other behemoth RPG’s on the market, with one of the most realistic and life-like Open worlds you could ever imagine. We were supposed to dive into a city that BREATHED with civilian day patterns, a sense of danger, a sense of growth from being a nobody. You were starting your new life in Night City to become a legend, to escape feeling a deep nothingness you had before you travelled there. Funny thing is that you feel that WHILE you’re in Night City… and in real life as well.
Sure, the game might be one of the most beautiful and deeply filled open worlds you’ll ever play, but there’s absolutely NOTHING there but repeat missions (we’re talking about BESIDES the main stuff). When I play Skyrim, after playing it MULTIPLE times in MULTIPLE different ways, I’ve started to realize what a true RPG should be. Even the Outer Worlds, which came out just recently, had some of the greatest choice and consequence of all time. Not particularly the most beautiful and amazing world and such, but in the position of doing WHATEVER you want? Outer Worlds dominated. And you know what, since we’re bringing the whole party here, might as well bring in GTA V. I don’t care how sick we all are of hearing this comparison, it needs to be said. CD Projekt Red pretty much boasted in all their trailers and teasers that Cyberpunk would basically be a GTA V mixed with Skyrim/Outer Worlds/Mass Effect/Fallout RPG experience. Choice. Consequence. A REAL living world. A game you could play seemingly forever on a single run. Cyberpunk is not that AT ALL.
Lets start with the world. Night City is pretty much the only good thing about the entire world in this game. I LOVED exploring the city, seeing all the areas they so very well hand crafted to make it truly feel like a futuristic mega city. Thing is, this experience is completely destroyed by pretty much everything else, INCLUDING yourself. This world doesn’t feel real, even in a fantastical way like Cyrodiil or New Vegas did. It’s ruined by the people, who are the most brain dead garbage AI I have seen probably ever. They do absolutely NOTHING all day, have no real life paths as they wander aimlessly, and will entirely disappear as you turn away from them for a couple seconds. Or shoot you gun, easiest way to clear an entire street. Then they added the “talk” option to them. Well hot dog it’s fun to go around hearing everyone say “STOP TALKING TO ME” or “Hey” as every single conversation piece. Then the driving… the NPC driving is atrocious, it’s like they ran out of time making the driving (heck, pretty much the whole game) and just said,
“Alright. Lets make all the AI drive like rush hour LA but everyone has their pedal to the metal and when they get confused because they’ve fallen off the road or they’re literally on top of another car just make them all vanish into thin air. Just like every game with good driving AI.”
What a disappointment to play a Next Gen title that is such a joke of an open world.
And finally, the police. This is the worst part, in my opinion. How can you have a game BASED ON CRIME and the cops are literally the most horrifically programmed nightmares of NPC? I mean, you shoot a cop and you pretty much summon every cop in night city to your location immediately, and by that I mean they actually teleport right on top of you. They’re also dumb as nails, and will either obliterate you on site if they spawn too close to where you are, OR you can grenade 4 cops at once, run about a block or two, and they completely give up the hunt. You are Night City’s most wanted, and the cops give up after a two block chase. on foot. in the middle of a street. without any civilians blocking their path cause they all disappeared when you fired your weapon. It’s hard to believe they somehow managed to create the opposite of the GTA V cop experience. Heck, the guards in SKYRIM gave more of a realistic fight, and you could SHOUT them into the air!
The next thing about the world that is so beyond disappointing is the things to do. Cause.. there’s NOTHING to do that sets this game a part. Valhalla has HEAPS of crazy fun minigames. Dragon Age Inquisition is all about expanding what you can do to greater lengths and growing friendships with your fellow companions. But Cyberpunk… has nothing. Nothing but a bunch of dumb stores that all sell literally the same thing (I went to EVERY store in the game) and has the same lame NPC standing there, no conversation, just buy. I made the effort to travel to each and every store in the game, and the gun stores always sell the same stuff. Food stores and Bars? First off completely useless, second they are the exact same place and sell the same stuff. You want sushi? Go literally anywhere. You want Tacos? ANYWHERE.
But the worst part of this all, is the detail of these stores. How is it in a game where they boasted such high amounts of attention to things like this… that it’s the most basic encounter where the store DOES NOT MATTER. I couldn’t tell ya the difference between ANY of these stores because I run in, sell my crap to the person at the counter, and dash out like I was never there. There’s no conversation, no exploring the store (Even Red Dead Redemption II had this YEARS ago) and picking/modelling things. They could have accidentally put the gun store into a restaurant and I wouldn’t have noticed the difference due to my lack of care to anything other than the vendor selling the stuff.
Not your world. at all.
This is where I decided that, although I have fun playing Cyberpunk 2077, THIS is where I draw the line of it actually being a good…. *CHECKS NOTES* “Next Gen RPG”.
Your experience is pretty much the same as everyone else can have on launch day. This isn’t the Witcher 3 where people are figuring out new stuff YEARS into its existence. This isn’t Fallout 4 where your choices can drastically change the outcome and unlock or ruin certain areas of the world. No, this is Cyberpunk, where you can be the greatest Psychopath Night City has ever seen, and the worst that can happen is you drive a hostage who’s in your trunk into a lake and fail a quest, getting no reward and the guy hiring you says, “Try better next time.” Oooooo, a slap on the wrist, that’ll teach me.
I purposefully tried to RUIN my run of Cyberpunk (the second time through, of course) and I’ll tell ya, it was pretty much the same run as the first time besides the fact a heap more innocents died… which, who cares, they’re all clones anyways and the cops forget who you are 5 seconds later. This isn’t a game to make your own, this IS NOT a detailed world whatsoever, that changes as you make decisions. As I played, I would think “We’ve got a city to burn”? What game am I playing??” You just run around and shoot bad guys in back alleys. LITERALLY that’s it. The “Side Gigs” are pretty entertaining, but once again, your choice in probably more than 90% of them have pretty much NO negative outcome besides getting scorned a little bit. Everything you do is neutral, and everything you do is just filler.
In fact, I’m kinda thinking that’s what Cyberpunk is. It’s a FILLER game. Sure, it’s a game we waited all these years for, THEE game. But it’s lame. There’s nothing to do at “end game” and to get there is so beyond easy. By the time you’re level 10 you can pretty much destroy everything in your path without a problem, and the game just becomes unfun, repetitive, boring, unchangeable, and absolutely in NO WAY an RPG. This is an action/adventure game, folks, you want an RPG you go play Outer Worlds or Dragon Age.
Your Character
When you start Cyberpunk for the first time, they give you a ton of ways to build your character, including their look, their build, and their life path. Let me tell you that pretty much none of this matters besides when you look in a mirror and at the end of the game.
The life path illusion was put there for absolutely no reason. Sure, you can argue it gave you some extra dialogue… BUT THAT DID NOTHING. NOTHING. Life paths were the biggest joke this game bragged about. I’ve played ALL three routes, and you know what? I couldn’t tell the difference besides the fact that the corpo start actually sucked. The other two were interesting, but completely ignored as soon as the beginning cutscene played. I felt like saying the reason you got arrested in Skyrim had more impact than this did.
Besides you never seeing your character after hours (it was probably 10 minutes for me) of customizing your character, we go into what could be, potentially, the worst thing this game messed up, in fact, the biggest lie/illusion of promise in a game ever.
YOUR CYBERWARE.
I watched every trailer, every Night City live stream thing, and man did they TALK UP your body impacts and customizing, making it sound like you could pretty much change who you were entirely. That you can become someone you DID NOT start the game as, because your body is so scarred with changes. Nope, you can pretty much swap out the most INTENSE body impacts as easily as you swap a load of laundry. Maybe easier, actually. The MOST detailed and noticeable change are the arm things. Mantis Blades, Gorilla Arms, Hand Canon, and the Glowing Dental floss whip. They slightly change the look of your arms, but a LOT when you use them. Besides that, I felt like you couldn’t noticed when I got my wisdom teeth pulled more than when my dude got NEW LEGS. They didn’t allow you to change pretty much anything about your character, this system was SO BEAUTIFUL and UNIQUE and it’s ruined by them putting much 0 care into how it impacted your character, how it made you look or feel, the negatives of altering your body in such brutal and over the top ways. Instead, we have a system that is pretty much a picture of a skeleton and you put on it what you want without any drawbacks or changes.
Besides that, Cyberpunk 2077 might have some of the most disappointing story impacting character creation in any “RPG” ever. Once again, making this game feel so distant from what an RPG actually is.
The Verdict
Man, I WANT to say this game is so good, because the thing is, if they had actually delivered what they promised, I believe that this game might have been one of the greatest games of all time. But it’s not. There’s remnants of what they promised, there’s slight trickles of hope here and there, but ultimately the game is entirely crushed by false promised and dwindling hope.
Cyberpunk 2077 may just be the greatest concept EVER, sounding like the perfect experience on paper, but in actuality it’s very average. Nothing special. One of the biggest disappointments we’ve had in gaming, as we didn’t get even close to what was promised.
My Video Review
If you’d rather just watch my thoughts, here you go!